"The road we travel is rock and gravel," sings Jay Malinowski on "Tinco Dog," a ragged, sun-drenched number from Bedouin Soundclash's forthcoming "Street Gospels."
Although not entirely true given the Toronto-based trio's sophomoric success in 2004, Malinowski says the intense media scrutiny that followed their breakthrough hit - "When the Night Feels My Song" - forced the band to look inwards.
"One thing that gave us pause was the fact that we could see an ebb and flow in other groups' careers," he says, over the phone from his home in Toronto's Annex.
"It gave us a harder perspective on how fleeting everything is. For a two-year period we did the festival circuit twice and saw bands who at one point were the hot s--- and the next year weren't even at the festival."
The record for the most part written as touring wrapped for "Sounding a Mosaic" near the end of 2005, Malinowski says the music and lyrical content for the third disc changed after 2006's explosive beginning.
First, there was a Juno win for Best New Group of the Year, then tours with Ben Harper and Damien Marley, and slots at the Leeds and Reading Festivals and London's V-Fest.
As the glare of the "Next Big Thing" spotlight gleamed down on them, Malinowski's first instinct was to retreat. "You see the hype machine working and basically it makes you wonder if there's any reason for me to be doing this," he says.
"Am I just doing this for the fashion of being in a band?" he continues. "It made me wonder, are we making records that matter anymore? Are people going to be listening to this music in ten years?"
So, he and bandmates Pat Pengelly (drums) and Eon Sinclair (bass) stopped reading the music press and threw themselves ears first into gospel music.
And when it came time to record the follow-up, Malinowski had a clear idea of how he wanted the record to feel. "What seeped into the songs was a sense of spirituality about what we're doing as a band and why we do it," he says.
After several weeks in a Toronto studio, the threesome convened in Woodstock, N.Y. with producer Daryl Jenifer (Bad Brains), whereupon slow-grinding devotionals like "1259 Lullaby" and "Hush" morphed into soulful dance tracks - guest vocalist Vernon Buckley (the Maytones) gives "Higher Ground" a Horace Andy-ish twist, Money Mark (Beastie Boys) shoots jazz organ funk into "Bells of 59" and the punk-reggae twist of "Walls Fall Down" and "St. Andrews" gives props to English oldies the Clash and the English Beat.
As the band prepares to debut some of the material at this weekend's Rogers Picnic at Historic Fort York near Toronto's lakefront, Malinowski figures Bedouin will spend most of the rest of the year out on the road.
But getting the chance to perform alongside headliners like the Roots, Broken Social Scene spin-off, Apostle of Hustle, Bad Brains and others is a dream come true. "I can't believe I'm playing with the Roots and Bad Brains.
"These are bands that I grew up listening to. I remember buying 'Things Fall Apart' and 'Rock for Light' as a young kid. So, we're excited about the show. It's giving us that genuine boyish excitement that comes from being in a band."
The stage wired for some mid-set lighting theatrics, Bedouin no longer think guitar, bass and drums are enough to reach people right at the very back.
"I used to be really against having production. I assumed that was for U2, but not for bands like us. But I think that is the only way. It's impossible to play to a large audience and think that you're going to affect the person at the back with just yourself on stage and no lighting rig behind you. So we've started to incorporate those things into the show.
"We're also bringing out the Street Gospels choir, which includes Wade MacNeil from Alexisonfire, to help us debut some of this new material."
Though it's a stylistic expansion on Bedouin's previous work, Malinowski says the band is trying to come up with new ways to help old hooks snake their way back to the dance floor.
"I don't think anyone really does push the envelope. In the end, all artists are just stealing everything from the generation before.
"When people say, 'The Arctic Monkeys are pushing the envelope.' They're just the new Jam aren't they? They're just writing folk songs for their generation. We're just trying to write good songs. We're just trying to make an old story relevant again.
"If you can do that, you're doing something really well."
"Street Gospels" is in stores August 21.
Bedouin Soundclash performs Sunday, July 29, at Historic Fort York in Toronto.
